Many of us are saving the newspapers that landed on our sidewalks, and front porches, Wednesday morning. The inauguration was an historic event for which we want to save the printed memorabilia. I get the Deseret News, published here in Salt Lake City, and it had a large section dealing with the inauguration. Now I want to save the paper properly.
What are we to do with these historic papers? The following is an excerpt from a good article by Sue White in the January 17, 2009 edition The Saginaw News, posted at MLive.com.
Saving a newspaper for posterity
The first step to preserving history is getting the newspaper, and judging from how quickly supplies of the post-election edition disappeared, you will want to move fast…Once in hand, says Mark E. Harvey, state archivist for the Archives of Michigan, consider three factors in preserving your find.
“If you are storing it in the home, look for the most stable environment,” Harvey said. “Attics fluctuate in extreme temperatures and basements hold too much moisture. You want to find a closet on the main floor that doesn’t have an exterior wall and won’t expose it to sunlight.”
Secondly, he said, consider the proper materials for storage. Not all acid-free containers are created equal, he said, suggesting several suppliers on the Internet — Light Impressions, Hollinger Metal Edge and Gaylord Brothers — that museums and archives use regularly…
Don’t laminate the pages
Finally, Harvey said, use common sense.“You want to store the newspapers flat; they are made of fiber and will break apart at the folds,” he said. “You don’t want to laminate the papers, either. There is acid in the glue and over a long time, it will prove detrimental.
“The key to anything we do is that we can undo it. When we encapsulate a paper, we can cut an edge of the bag open and pull it out.”